PDP’s leaking engine

The crisis that currently bedevils the ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP is not courtesy of any happenstance. Simply put, it is a manifestation of a self-inflicted injury heralded by the ascension of current national chairman of the party, Adamu Mu’azu to the exalted seat despite calculations to the contrary.
Granted that mistakes can be made in the race to climb the stairs to the upper room, PDP and the dogged Mu’azu supporters then, were blinded to this fact and many others so much so that even when it was too obvious to the average non-PDP members that the party’s chairman had lost touch with strategies that could land PDP in its familiar winning ways, they chose to relish in whatever imputation they gave to the sobriquet, “Game Changer” they craftily coined to continue to assert the relevance of Mu’azu even in a sinking ship called PDP.
One observer was to note in the hey days of the last polls that “the party thought they make do with the rather questionable prediction of former National chairman, Vincent Ogbulafor that PDP will rule for 60 years; or went to sleep believing that the party would clear the polls in the fashion of that popular saying, “as it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall it be.”
In all these calculations, they did not factor in God’s grace that He has made sufficient to all men. Thus, whether they willed, wished or conjured it, without the finger of God in it, how could the PDP have won the elections?
Leaking engine
It is pertinent to point out here that PDP’s umbrella started leaking since the days former President Olusegun Obasanjo held sway as president. That was a dispensation of Jam body politics, as the Sapele man would call it.
With Obasanjo, there was no protocol; there was no civility; anything goes in so far as victory is achieved at the end of the day. Thus, it takes an Obasanjo to level Odi in the South-South region of the country months after his election in 1999 and rush to the Zaki Biam in the North-Central region in 2001 to steal, kill and destroy and yet ran for re-election and won with a landslide. That was a PDP president eating his cake and having it still.
But this time around, the party got a more refined president but inherited a huge tattered umbrella of the party where desperation, vis-a-vis despondency reigned side by side. Indeed, by the time Jonathan was assuming office as president in 2011, PDP’s umbrella was more like a broken down vehicle whose condition is worsened by a profusely leaking engine.
The party had overly ambitious state governors fighting to call the shots in the party even at the national level; and when they could not have their say and their way, they chose to play the black sheep in the fold; part of why PDP was to lose the presidential poll last month. The central leadership of the party was not left out in the entire devious scheme. Reports abound of the desperation with which members of PDP’s National Working Committee,NWC, looted the party blindly to the huge defeat it suffered at the general elections. After all, only recently, the NWC found courage to inform that each member got N30million for some outstanding allowances et al. Rubbish!
How can you be carrying an elephant on your head and still find time, strength and focus to search for a cricket inside its snaky hole? You could end up losing both items.
Thus, while the supposed owners and operators of the leaking engine of a party were engaged in affairs that would eventually sack them from office, their main opponent, All Progressives Congress, APC were busy pulling the rug off their feet. And they did it with the precision of a surgeon’s knife thus exposing the PDP to vicissitudes of the crazy political atmosphere that ensued. The party’s eventual defeat at the presidential poll was thus a loss foretold and expected.
Its scribe, Olisa Metuh, was to declare recently that PDP has overcome its post-election trauma. Well said. But methinks that rather than rushing to the press, the first thing to do was to embark on some confidence-building activities to win back members who are daily streaming out of the party to seek bread and butter elsewhere. The not-too-pleasant reaction of top members of the party to the latter day confidence of Metuh underpins this point.
It took a worried Senate President David Mark to openly express his fears over the continued acrimony between ensuing factions in the party. He publicly declared that “the PDP is already hemorrhaging”, pointing out that, “unless we halt the bleeding and find the necessary therapy, we may be heading for the final burial of the party”. He added that the party is in a comatose status and every effort must be employed to resuscitate it rather than the unnecessary rancor and buck passing that has caused the health of the leaking engine to worsen.
APC’s basket mouth
Even for the APC, the same can be said of it in a different fashion though.
Yes, the party’s propaganda machinery was effectively employed to stop PDP in its path of self righteousness.
But with the benefit of hindsight, I can state that the opposition party employed outright lies, half-truths and mob journalism to cause panic, fear, doubts and division in the polity which it was to capitalize on to screw the ruling party. With the megalomaniac Lai Mohammed alone, APC was too sure of taking the propaganda war to the bedroom of the PDP and dictating the pace of things there. And when you add the pricking press statements authored by the spokesman of the APC Presidential Campaign Organisation, Malam Garba Shehu to it all, you had a complete arsenal of warheads consistently launched out against the PDP.
That meant a basket mouth full of worries for the PDP as the APC was always many steps ahead of the ruling party both in terms of effectively utilizing the formal and informal media to their advantage, a strategy the APC perfected months ahead a the general elections.
With the battle won and lost, let the PDP leaking engine be overhauled and let APC’s basket mouth be re-orientated. Let devices that throw forth acrimonies that heightened tension in the land be broken. And let outgoing President Jonathan and incoming successor, Muhammadu Buhari approach their respective responsibilities with the grace and candour the constitution and all of us expect from them. They must each ignore the ungodly and unpatriotic counsel of their aides for they are capable of undermining those fine ideals upon which our democracy is pegged all for some personal gains.
For now, especially in the countdown to May 29, 2015, Nigerians are watching.